Roster Building - Strategies... Topic

This mostly consisted of figuring out how I would score any runs, and then putting in pitchers and defence to take away runs from anyone who tried the same trick. With BA and SB held down, the obvious options for scoring are BB, HR, 2B and 3B. The first two you can stop with strike-throwing deadballers. I also included the 2005 Carlos Silva for mop up work, who at least helps with keeping the BB down. I would have liked to have A+/A+ outfielders to help with the 2B and 3B, but they are a bit expensive. And it's hard to find good 3B hitters who don't violate the SB rule in any case. On the other hand, if no one is stealing bases, I could have a power hitting catcher with no arm, so that puts some runs back on the board.

The restriction to 10 SB left an opening for pinch runners. Originally I had three of them, but that seemed excessive; so now I have two. I can't be the only one with that idea, so I also needed a late inning catcher with a good arm. (Quickly checking my division, it doesn't look like anyone else is doing this, so maybe the extra C wasn't needed.) This all makes for a mess of a roster, but hopefully it all fits together, and I'll sneak out a few 2-1 wins.

I originally had a team I loved for this; much better than my round 1 team. Unfortunately, when I was putting it together I seemed to think that Pete Browning didn't have an eligible 1891 season. I'm not sure why I thought that. When I found out I couldn't jump from 1892 to 1890, this required some changes.

Happily, the team still sort of works. I was able to move Sammy Strang from a numbers-filling role to a super-sub. And I was able to use better part seasons from some of my relief pitchers. I looked at using 1908 Addie Joss (I had used 1907 in round one), but even with the savings from going to a cheaper Browning, it didn't work. But hopefully this team will be OK.

I tried a ton of combinations here. There were a few attractive options involving Ozzie Smith, which I saw are being used. And a couple of nice Tris Speaker teams, who looks like a very popular choice. But eventually I was happiest building a team based around Giants, like I normally do for franchise leagues around this cap. Duke Farrell let me pick up the 1905 Cy Young, and provides a great catcher season. George Davis lets me pick up the 1908 Ed Walsh, and provides a great SS season, and that was enough.

I'd like to have one more good outfielder - Tom Brown is pretty weak as a third outfielder. Actually, that was a common problem with teams I tried putting together; much easier to get 2 good outfielders than three. And I don't have much of a bullpen; I have a lot of scrubs at the back end. But with Young and Walsh and a bunch of people who get on base, hit doubles (214) and triples (112), I'm happy enough with this team.

My initial strategy was to be super flexible at the start of the draft. I thought the Whales were great for this. Hendrix is a fantastic SP for this cap, and lots of Federal League players work well too. But I hadn't realised how much the $8 million per team minimum really would restrict things. If I used too many of those great hitters on the Whales, I would be forced to use almost $8 million exactly on the other teams. So that wasn't as helpful a first round pick as I expected.

But I couldn't believe the 1918 Giants fell into my lap. And the 1987 Cards were a surprise as well; being given a left side of the infield just like that was nice.

I probably should have simply passed in round 7 though. I had several options for what to do with the final two picks. But they only made sense as pairs. It all worked, but I could have been seriously in a mess if I hadn't got that last pick I needed. As it turns out, my CF only has 399 PA, and my pitching staff is full of pitchers with hard to use IP counts. So it wasn't perfect, but it went better than my drafts usually go.

Hitters: 6765 PA, .285/.397/.427
Pitchers: 1498 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 53 HR

110 Million Team - Hughes's Heroes

I made two serious blunders during this draft. I had a bunch of $400-500K players picked out, of which I thought Pumpsie Green was the cheapest. But I'd misread his salary, and suddenly I was committed to only taking $530K+ players. And then when I was making a list of pitchers I could take in the last round, I thought I had enough depth because worst case scenario I would get 1986 Clemens. But I didn't notice he'd already been taken. Oops.

So beyond that the draft was basically a scramble. I wanted to get some relatively high PA bench players to allow me to take some starters who were a few PA short. And that worked actually, I was able to get some good regulars who need the occasional rest. On the pitching side, I was constantly revising. I knew I'd be taking 12 pitchers, so it was just a matter of not going to taking 200+ IP pitchers too early or too late. As it turned out, three great pitchers at around $6M fell to me. If that hadn't happened, I would have had to grab a few pitchers at around 180-220 IP to avoid having too many IP. So that was a lucky break.

My biggest worry with this team is HR allowed. I went long on modern strikeout pitchers, who do allow the occasional HR. I was hoping that everyone would be building teams to beat deadballers, so my HR tendencies wouldn't get me in trouble. But from the looks of it, I could be getting burned a few times.

I didn't love this theme. The minimum we could spend under the rules was $111M. So there's only $9M to play with. That made lots of players, really any player between $x.7M and $x.99M, really difficult to justify. So I'm worried we'll have too many teams that are too similar.

Beyond that, my team was fairly normal. Platoon at 3B. Try and keep lots of LH starters, as I always do in platoon friendly leagues. I'll probably be using Whit Wyatt, a very popular choice for the $7M pitcher, as a Long B, which seems crazy for that much money, but that's the odd way this roster fell out.

I didn't plan it this way, but I had a lot more 3B than other teams. I probably should have played at Petco, not Target.

I had no idea what to do with this team. I couldn't find enough part-time SB guys to build platoons of base-stealers. There weren't even very many awesome triples hitters because of the SB restriction. I could have gone with A+++ defense but that was also somewhat limited by the steals restriction. I looked for guys who hit .249/.250 but normalized upwards (like 1968) but there weren't a lot of them either. So I was left with power, and that's what I went with. My team can't field, and they can't run. But they are playing in Yankee III and they have a total of 205 HRs. And my pitching staff allowed zero home runs. Not one pitcher allowed a HR in real life. That meant I had to run a 1, 2a/2b, 3a/3b rotation to get enough innings, since not many 200+ IP guys have a 0.00 HR/9. Yankee III should help defend against the other triples-based teams, and we might go 55-25 at home but 25-55 on the road. I know a lot of other teams will have deadball pitchers too, so our games will just be my hitters standing around waiting for them to make a mistake. This team could be my undoing; they could easily lose 100 games.

80mil - One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

All the work for this team was done in round 1. I decided not to make any changes to the team I planned during round 1. I only have 1270 non mop-up IP, which probably isn't enough. I won 85 games in round 1 and got swept in the playoffs. If this team can match that performance, I'll be happy.

90mil - The Collins-Foxx Syndicate

I love these kinds of research-based themes. This was the only one in this round, so I spent a lot of time on it. At the end of the day, I just couldn't find a combination I liked better than Bill Nicholson, Ted Williams and Al Simmons in the heart of the order, backing up a rotation of deadballers. I liked Foxx's career extending into the 40s better than the 2 deadballer pair of Speaker and Collins. Collins sets the table and Foxx plays 3B. Mickey Cochrane "only" has an A arm, so we might be a little vulnerable to the Ozzie/Coleman teams, but when I tried to build one of those teams myself, I didn't like it as much. (I think Ozzie/Pendleton was the one I liked best). I looked at teams with Cy Williams, Frank Schulte and Gavvy Cravath but didn't like their supporting casts as much. In the end I went with the deadball pitchers/HR hitters combo that usually serves me well.

100mil - The Babe-Maris-Granderson Trifecta

I was happy to have the 23rd pick since there wasn't really any team I was dying to get. I wanted to wait on the Wagner era unless I could get a whole pitching staff with my first pick. And of course, the '07 Cubs fell into my lap, with 4 usable starters to give me flexibility in which 3 I chose (Overall, Pfiester, Brown, Lundgren). I paired them with the 1888 Giants at pick 2.02, rounding out my rotation with Cannonball Titcomb, adding a shutdown closer in Bill George and a choice of Buck Ewing or Roger Connor. That pretty much settled my strategy - I had 6 picks and 6 live-ball eras, and my rotation was done. So I needed to add 1-2 hitters and 1-2 relievers with every pick.

The 3rd pick was perfect - the 80 Phillies gave me a masher in Mike Schmidt and a pair of good relievers in Tug and Bystrom. The 4th gave me the 96 Braves with Chipper at SS, Borbon in the 'pen and Tyler Houston as a backup C. I could have used '96 Maddux if things worked out differently than I expected, but they didn't. After a long wait, I added a pair of Yankee teams (61 and 2011) to add more power, and get the stadium I needed in Yankee III. The 61 Yankees had a lot of flexibility but I knew I'd be using Maris, and the 11 Yankees were the same with Granderson. For my last 2 teams, I needed a couple more bats and I needed them to come from teams that were just about 8mil. I rejiggered things and added the '46 Pirates for 2 HR-preventing RPs and Ralph Kiner, and then the '32 Yankees with Ruth and a couple of bench guys. I don't really have a leadoff hitter and I'm a little short on catcher PAs, but I do have a lineup that's basically 9 mashers. Real life totals: 322 HRs hit, 21 allowed.

For hitters, I looked for players who had a semblance of on-base skills, some power, and defense that wasn't terrible. I seemed to have used many of the same players that others used, like Tettleton, Blefary, and so forth. I have some platoons in the OF in order to have as many players on my team be useful. I don't think I did anything unusual with the hitting. The pitching however... oh boy... could be a major disaster. It appears that I am the one and only owner who didn't pay much attention to HRs allowed! My pitchers allowed a whopping 126 of them! That appears to be far more than any other team in this league. I payed attention to things like normalization for OAV and WHIP and HRs allowed which is why I made the choices that I did. I see others went for deadballers who normalize pretty miserably, especially in OAV, but... don't give up many HRs. So, we'll see what happens. I'm hoping that my better OAV and WHIP normalized numbers will keep down the number of baserunners so that the homers allowed will be mostly of the solo variety, and that my team will be able to hit better than others because the OAV numbers for other teams will be worse than mine. But... what will likely happen is that my team will allow more homers than anyone else's, which will likely result in more losses than wins. I also notice that I have more IPs than anyone else, so hopefully this will be more of a hitters league than everyone else expects, which will be to my advantage. Again, we'll see...

I have to admit that I pretty much sold out this team on the first iteration and was hoping that it wouldn't be too awful in the 2nd iteration. What I found is that my hitting is actually a bit better in this 2nd iteration, but my pitching is significantly worse. I think, frankly, that I have the worst pitching in the league. I don't think there is a realistic chance that this team will make the playoffs. I'm just hoping they won't have such a poor record that it will kill me.

I knew I wanted a player who encompassed the NY Giants of the late teens in order to get Toney, Nehf, Schupp, etc. on my team. I also wanted a player who would encompass some of my favorite cookies, including Gavvy Cravath. I tried Eppa Rixey, who would get me alot of seasons, including some of the Philadelphia A's of the 1930s, but eventually, found that Bobby Byrne got me Cravath and others that I like, but also got me 1917 Cicotte, who rocks, as well as Babe Adams' 1909 season. In the end, the Cicotte season swayed me to use Bobby. Slim Sallee of all people was the guy who got me those Giants players (including his own 1916 season), but also got me Luque's pretty cool 1920 season too. Unfortunately, Slim and Art Nehf were not teammates in 1919, but the 1909 Adams season replaced Nehf just fine anyway. I'm very happy with the pitching on this team. I think the hitting, expecially with Cravath and Shoeless Joe Jackson, will normalize very well. I'm reasonably confident about this team. One accidental, but fortunate thing about this team is that I'm using a catcher platoon of Roger Bresnahan and Ivey Wingo, both of whom have very good arms, so that should cut down on those damn Ozzie teams it looks like half the league went with...

I had the first pick in this draft. I first thought about the 1914 Chicago Whales, with Claude Hendrix and Rankin Johnson, but I didn't want to blow my first pick on that era. I thought there would be lots more choices in that era, and I kind of wanted some of my favorite cookies, including Gavvy Cravath of course. So then, it was obvious: the 2002 Red Sox with Lowe and Pedro... but no, again, I wanted to save this era til the end because this is the era that has the most relief options. But... I did want a stud pitcher to start with. After doing some research, I decided to go with the 1964 Dodgers since they have not one stud pitcher, but two (Koufax and Drysdale), plus uber-armed Johnny Roseboro to cut down any of those annoying stolen-base artists. Also, I believed that this would be the most lean era to fill, so... that became my choice.

Next, it became apparent that the earliest era was going to be really tough to fill, especially to get a decent pitcher. I was going to pick the 1888 Giants, but someone picked them ahead of me, so my next pick was the 1888 White Stockings to get a 1B (Cap Anson) and a decent reliever in Frank Dwyer. I also chose the 1988 Milwaukee Brewers because I really liked the combo of Teddy Higuera and Paul Molitor (3B); they seemed to fit my salary needs perfectly. After that, I felt I was going to be ok with SP; I just needed to fill out my team with hitters. So, my next choices were hitting-related, although with the 1940 Yanks I got Tiny Bonham's nice 100 inning year. I saved the modern era for last since again, I figured I could find a team with relievers to round out my pitching staff. That team was the 2010 Texas Rangers with Cliff Lee as my last starter, and Darren O'Day and Neftali Feliz as my two stud relievers. I'm pretty happy with this team. I expect them to do reasonably well.

So true, but at least I got Toney, even if it ruined my team a bit. My strategy was to make sure I did *not* get screwed on the last pick and end up eating millions of dollars. That happened to several owners so I think that was a good idea. I wanted my last pick to be a pitcher in the 8-9 mil range, where I felt I would have lots of options. So, this meant that I needed to platoon. I assigned roughly 7 million to each position and felt I should platoon at 1B, one OF spot, and C. That all worked out at first, I got my 1B platoon going with Frank Thomas, and an OF platoon of Sheffield and Walker, and the C platoon of Jack Lapp and Chief Meyers. (I didn't worry about catcher arm at this level by the way, although Lapp and Meyers aren't terrible throwers). I jumped ahead of everyone else salary-wise with this strategy, which allowed me to get Jake Northrop. However, for some reason, I had trouble filling the other half of my 1B platoon; players kept getting picked that would have worked, such as Johnny Mize and Joey Votto. So, in the end, I ended up wasting about 300 ABs. Also, there was a point when I was hoping to get either Mark Eichhorn or Nolan Ryan, in the 6 million range, but both went before I expected them to, so I had to scramble to recover there. In the end, I think I could have done better, but I'm reasonably happy with this team as well. Expect to see lots of Fred Toney in the 8th inning!

I think the pitching choices were pretty routine. I got the usual guys, Maddux, Pedro, Toney, Schupp, Bernhard. I see most of these same pitchers on other teams. The hitting choices were more interesting. Obviously, with the 3, 2, and 1 million dollar choices, there had to be some part time players. I felt that OF was the place to do this. My 10 mil player is King Kelly at C, 9 mil is Arky Vaughan at SS, 8 mil is Nap Lajoie at 2B, and 7 mil is Benny Kauff in CF. So, that covers the difficult "up the middle" positions to fill. 6 mil: Wade Boggs at 3B, 5 mil: Gavvy Cravath (of course!) in OF, 4 mil: John Kruk (one of my fav cookies) at 1B. So the 3, 2, and 1 mil spots were that final OF spot. I chose Target Field to cut down on the homers, since my team doesn't have that many of them, but they do have lots of doubles and triples. I think this team will do well.

At this low of a cap without the help of SBs and AVG, walks plus HR hitting seem to be the only way to reliably score runs. I decided I wanted to focus on quality of IP/PA instead of quantity so decided I wanted a high minus singles park but still allowing HRs which led me to select South Side Park. Having such a large disparity what my offense can do and what my pitching gives up (170 vs. 2 HRs allowed, 639 vs. 184 BBs allowed) should give me a substantial advantage versus most opponents. Hoping the low PA, low IP with the -3 singles park will keep fatigue manageable. Having Bardin’s pitching staff in my division will help pump up my offensive numbers…

My original team was very disappointing (sub .500) so I don’t expect this version to fair any better. I can only hope most owners front loaded in round #1.

Ballpark: Target Field (HR LF/RF:-4/-4 1B:0 2B:1 3B:1)

Offense: PA 5702, AVG .286, OBP .369, SLG .390, OPS .759, 202 SBs

Pitching: IP 1340, OAV .219, WHIP 1.01, ERA 2.36, HR/9 0.22

$90 Million: A Midsummer Shoeless Nap

With the success of my round #1 $90m team with its focus on pitching, I decided to again look for a pair of elite pitchers which could be paired together. Ended up looking at 1908 Addie Joss along with 1917 Eddie Cicotte so this led me to use Nap Lajoie with Shoeless Joe Jackson as a means to get both. I’m hoping that my offense can again generate enough runs to win some low scoring games (otherwise I’m in for a world of hurt).

Ballpark: Comiskey Park (I) (HR LF/RF:-1/-2 1B:1 2B:0 3B:1)

Offense: PA 5682, AVG .299, OBP .366, SLG .405, OPS .771

Pitching: IP 1381, OAV .210, WHIP 0.96, ERA 1.74, HR/9 0.06

$100 Million: Team Adjusted ERAs

With an early pick in round #1, I focused on getting some good starting pitching and got the 1906 Cubs which gave me 3 good SPs. Each selection afterwards, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t locked into any one particular set of players so that if my later selections got taken, I could alter plans easily. Wish I got some better relievers but was just too difficult to get everything.

With the unlucky draw of picking last, my first instinct was to get a pitcher that nobody else hopefully could afford… 1888 Silver King. For offense, I decided going with Polo Grounds and getting primarily affordable double hitters would fit in my budget. That meant having to save money in the early rounds and carefully watching everyone’s selection during the middle rounds. At one point, it looked like yankeeso7 might go for 88 King which would of wrecked my plans so I thought about shifting but by the 23rd round it was apparent I was the only one able to pull it off so in the end I went with my original plan.

Looking at how pitching staffs would be mostly 4 or 5 elite/good starters and a lot of big money elite relievers, scoring runs looks to be at a premium. I expected most starters to be dead-ballers, so I decided to go with doubles mostly as means of scoring on offense (and using Polo Grounds as my home park).

I am shocked I'm playing round 2. I just wanted to do better than my pre-rank, which I failed to do the last time I played WISC in 2010. I don't expect much from this round but the journey will be worth the pain of the losses.

$60Mil - No Hit, No Run $60Mil Bombers

I went back and forth with this team on whether to go for just HRs or look for OBP. Like others have mentioned, when I saw this theme, I thought that the only way to build the offense would be for HR or BB. Doubles and Triples hitters usually have some speed/SB behind them at least enough so that the theme would restrict them. I built a HR team at first but at the last minute changed to OBP+ as my search criteria. The lineup seems to have many of the same players as others have chosen and I fear that this league is littered with the same individuals because of the theme restrictions. Lineup: '19 Graney, 1886 Morrill, '52 Kiner, '67 Blefary, 2004 Chipper, '67 Mantle, '09 Kendall, and '76 Garrett. No real bench to speak of, not my style anyway. Pitching is where I was completely lost since I never played this cap before. I read last year's team building thread and saw that between schwarze and rbow, 1200-1250 IP should be a good number. I ended up with 1210 IP (27 Mop-up IP). '06 Cy Young, '14 Bob Groom, and '09 Ed Summers make up the rotation. I wanted to prevent HR but try to normalize well. I figured '09 Summers would be a stud at this cap & hope he can deliver. The bullpen is just cheap under 50 IP players. I hope it will be enough.

$80Mil - WISC $80 Mil Prog/Reg Round 2With this team, I saved my better team for round 2 and based on what I have heard from others, that should benefit this team. The team lost the WS in 5 in the first round & I feel that this team is better. Better bench, better starters, solid bullpen as last time & a more productive lineup. I'm expecting a lot from this team and this team will need to do well if I am going to advance my position in Round 2. My Lineup is: '98 Vizquel, '25 Carey, '16 Saier, '97 Nixon, '89 Raines, '79 Wynegar, '96 Boggs, &'94 Lemke rounding out the group. The bench is solid in my mind and can be a suitable backup when I go to them for rest. The staff was made for round 2 in mind and has the usual suspects we know and detest. '08 Joss, '08 Brown, and '09 Summers with '15 McCabe as the closer, '38 Dean, '06 Rivera, and '80 Rincon. Mopups fill out the rest of the IP.

With this team, I wanted to work with a deadball staff because I feel that pitching is the key to winning and that the offense can manufacture itself whatever way it has to. I also tried to make a McGriff and Ausmus combo but stuck with the Young and Falkenberg combo because it gave me the pitching I wanted & the offense is not that bad to me at least. Young has a nice long career to work from and Falkenberg gives me a good bullpen season, connection to the '08 Naps, and an oddity in the '03 Pirates. The lineup is: '04 Stahl, '08 Lajoie, '03 Wagner, '01 Freeman, 1899 Lave Cross, 1890 Wright, 1892 McAleer for range, and '15 Rariden for an A+ arm against those SB teams. The staff has a lot of unecessary IP as mop up but needed to fill out the roster. I could have gone with Tris as the teammate but my experiencefrom the first round with the $100 Mil team made me weary of drafting a team with a weak bullpen. The rotation is: '01 Young, '08 Joss, '03 Leever. The pen has '08 Steele, '15 Falkenberg, '15 Wiltse, & a bunch of mop ups that never see the light of day.

The downside of having the 23rd pick in the 100mil draft was having to pick 2nd in this draft. I had no idea how to approach it, so I took a 350k Rogers Hornsby to take some of the big Hornsby years off the board. My general approach was to have a much flatter salary structure than everyone else - 900k Ramon Santiago with my 2nd pick, Shawn Wooten with my 3rd pick. I planned to draft 12 pitchers, with 5-6 of them being starters, and I knew I'd only have 900-1000 IP from my rotation, so the other relievers had to have a lot of innings. I also planned to draft 3 platoons on offense, so I took Beltran, Wooten and Payton early to be the short side of their respective platoons. It worked for a while, because I got to the 2.5-3mil relievers first and got my pick, but when I started getting into the 5-6 mil range where I planned to draft most of my pitchers, a lot of other people were drafting 150-200 IP starters, which I didn't expect. I got almost all of the hitters I wanted, but my rotation was a mess. I ended up with 8.5mil left to draft my last pitcher, and while I expected everyone would be in the 10+ mil range with their last picks, I still lost a few guys I was targeting with my last pick. Hence my team name - we waited 24 rounds, and in the end, all we got was Allen Sothoron?

I was generally going for AVG/XBH on the offensive side, and not worrying too much about HRs. In the end I put them in Chase Field, which wasn't ideal, but looked like the best match I could find for a park.

120mil - Stairway to Moneyball

For a lot of these salary ranges, the choices were really obvious (Maddux95, Leonard14, Chamberlain85) so I knew what I'd be facing. I built 2 teams and really couldn't decide between them. I built an A+++ range team with a lot of triples to play in Petco, assuming that all of my pitchers were really good, and trying to ensure that every inning we played would be high leverage. I really liked that team and normally I would have gone with them.

But I also decided to build a "moneyball" team which would exploit what we know about the current sim - deadball pitchers are underpriced because of their low Ks, and good defense is overpriced. So I've got a bad glove Cupid Childs at 2B, Wade Boggs hitting leadoff, B-range Hack wilson in CF, bad glove Ruth and Shoeless Joe in the corner OF slots, David Ortiz at 1B. I did still draft good throwing catchers just in case, but otherwise, these guys are here to hit and not do anything else. I went with Chief Bender instead of Maddux95 for my 10mil slot, which I might regret, but I was sticking to the deadballer theme. I have 4 high-IP relievers (Nehf, Babe Adams, Chamberlain, and Toney) and we're playing in Arlington. I might really regret not going with the A+++ guys, but we'll see.

This recap was a bit tough to do so long after making the teams but this is my best effort on my team creation thoughts.....

60 Mil: No Hit, No Run, No Idea – 97-65 (won WS)

On offence I looked specifically for decent normalized homers followed by avg+, walks and doubles.I figured most would go this route given the restrictions so I really tried to squeeze as much out of my hitting as possible and didn’t worry too much about PA for the bottom half of my lineup.I find that using hitters in the low 90’s fatigue doesn’t really affect them much and is a much better option than skimping on IP in terms of risk.So the hitting was fine – we finished 5th in homers and 7th in OPS and my home park of Sicks’ Stadium was a good choice (ended up 51-30 at home).On the pitching side I knew I would focus on low or nil Hr/9 and didn’t worry too much about oavg but rather wanted to keep the bb/9 low.So that obviously meant taking pitchers from the 1900-1919 range.I don’t think I did anything innovative here and went with 9 (non-mop-up) relievers to try to ensure I wouldn’t run into any fatigue problems.I didn’t pay much attention to defence (exemplified by the fact that not one non-pitcher had a “+” all year!) as it is quite expensive but I did make sure to get an “A” glove at SS,3B and CF.The results were great despite the fact that I don’t really like low cap leagues – in fact my two World Series wins in the WISC were this team and the 70 mil team in round 1 (which also won a TOC) so I guess I’m doing something right.

80 Mil: MNH’s Chapter 2 – 103-59 (lost WS)

My first round team won 90+ games and made the playoffs in a tough league.That team suffered some serious fatigue problems though and almost succumbed to the FDS (fatigue death spiral).I was a little spooked by that so I changed what was supposed to be my round 2 team to add more IP.This resulted in diminished hitting but the change seemed to work out fine.This was my team with the best record in round 2 and I followed the tried and true strategy at this cap of good percentage steals (and lots of them) with some doubles, walks, early 20th century pitching and an A+ arm catcher.Really nothing fancy here.Tim Raines is great, Kirk Gibson is underrated and Joe Morgan stinks no matter what year you use.

90 Mil: Collins & Speaker – 101-61 (lost WS)

For this theme I looked at a couple other choices but kind of knew it would come down to Collins and Speaker.I was shocked to see only one other team use this pair (alleyviper’s team that beat me in the WS).This duo gives you the cheap stud pitching from the early 20th century along with enough quality bats at this cap (most other owners did use the same strategy with other duos but for whatever reason this pair seemed to work best).We led the league in runs by a large margin even though I stubbornly refused to move my 4th batter (Harry Davis) all year - he ended up with this line: .231, .304, .403.My focus on the hitting side was guys who got on base along with good normalized xbhs.The pitching staff contained a lot of the usual suspects and held up fine other than Harry Krause who was a massive disappointment at this cap.Regardless, I felt this was my best team in the tournament and was surprised not to win the WS.

100 Mil: Fimple is Einhorn – 83-79 (lost Division Series)

My worst 2nd round team although we lucked out by being in a weak division.This was a tough draft and I didn’t really have a handle on how to best approach it.I had a couple choices towards the end of the draft that were taken just before my pick that caused a bit of havoc with my team.There were also a lot of theme restrictions that made it much more difficult than just figuring out how to puzzle together the best players.I decided to focus on starting pitching with my first few picks and got 4 solid starters in Bernhard, Adams, Maddux and Chandler that would log a lot of innings.This turned out ok as my team finished 3rd in ERA.I must have really neglected my hitting though as we finished near the bottom in most major offensive categories.My highest SLG from a regular was .389 so that kind of tells the story of this team’s offensive woes.I’m not sure what I would do much different if I had to do it again as it looks like most of the hitting was pretty bad in the league.I guess it was a mistake using the Pujols era for two of my key hitters (Ramirez and Ortiz) as their power numbers were basically non-existent.I should have known better.

110 Mil: Best Laid Plans – 95-67 (lost LCS)

I liked this draft a bit more than the other one.I decided to basically attack this as if it wasn’t really a draft and just build the best 110 mil team possible.I built a team on the site and then drafted according to whoever was the lowest salaried player.It worked for a while but once we got up to the high salaried SPs things fell apart for me a bit.I couldn’t figure out why people were wasting money by buying expensive bench guys to move up the salary chain more quickly.It got pretty evident towards the end of the draft.Having said that, looking back, it seems that there wasn’t a particular strategy that worked best as the successful teams had both high and low deviations in player salaries.For hitting I did what I normally do and focused on walks, doubles, stolen bases and a bit of pop while ensuring good defence at ss and cf.I was very pleased with my hitting as we finished 4th in the league in runs and OPS.’94 Biggio, ’30 Herman and ’11 Baker were all decent although ’70 McCovey underperformed significantly (.726 ops vs 1.056 in rl).My pitching was a real problem most of the year which I guess is not surprising given what I said about my draft falling apart at the end.I had to settle for lesser Mathewson and then really had to settle for ’02 Taylor after some guys I had been eyeing went before me.Taylor was a big disappointment with his .304 oavg making him little better than 350+ mop-up innings.Thankfully my bullpen was pretty solid and I had more IP than I was used to so I never ran into any fatigue problems.

120 Mil: Missteps – 84-78 (missed playoffs)

This team never really got rolling although we missed the playoffs by only 3 games.My first decision was where to platoon – I decided on catcher and OF as those seem the most logical choices.I made sure that one of my (4) catchers had an A+ arm so I could start him against any speed teams.I tried to spend close to the bottom part of the salary slot on my pitching so I would have more to spend on hitting.It seemed that there were more than enough IP available at the bottom part of the slots with top quality pitchers – especially relievers.I guess I should have spent more on my top tier pitcher (I chose Lady Baldwin) as that might have made a difference but I had a lot of the same pitchers as others (Bernhard, Brown, Wyatt, Pedro, Toney) and they just didn’t perform that great.We finished 2nd from the bottom in ERA and runs against.I can’t even look at my home park as being a factor (the Metrodome which is a moderate hitters park) as our ERA was almost a full run lower at home than away.We finished 2nd last in errors so I suppose I should pay more attention to defence at higher caps.

That’s all I got – it was another fun and frustrating several months and I was very happy to have luck on my side.It is certainly a big factor in winning this tournament.